The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings. Bernard Cornwell
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the Medwæg dark with their blood, but the chance was lost. Alfred trusted the defences at Hrofeceastre to hold the invaders in place, and those walls and the garrison did their job while he assembled an army of horsemen. He had the troops of his own royal household, and to that he added the household warriors of every ealdorman between Wintanceaster and Hrofeceastre, and they all rode eastwards, the army getting larger as they travelled, and they gathered at the Mæides Stana, just south of the old Roman fort that was now the town of Hrofeceastre.
Alfred had moved fast and well. The town had defeated two Danish attacks, and now Gunnkel’s men found themselves threatened not just by Hrofeceastre’s garrison, but by over a thousand of Wessex’s finest warriors. Gunnkel, knowing he had lost his gamble, sent an envoy to Alfred, who agreed to talk. What Alfred was waiting for was the arrival of Æthelred’s ships at the mouth of the Medwæg, for then Gunnkel would be trapped, and so Alfred talked and talked, and still the ships did not come. And when Gunnkel realised that Alfred would not pay him to leave, and that the talking was a ruse and that the West Saxon king planned to fight, he ran away. At midnight, after two days of evasive negotiations, the invaders left their campfires burning bright to suggest they were still on land, then boarded their ships and rode the ebb tide to the Temes. And so the siege of Hrofeceastre ended, and it was a great victory in that a Viking army had been ignominiously expelled from Wessex, but the waters of the Medwæg were not thickened by blood. Gunnkel lived, and the ships that had come from Beamfleot returned there, and some other ships went with them so that Sigefrid’s camp was strengthened with new crews of hungry fighters. The rest of Gunnkel’s fleet either went to look for easier prey in Frankia or found refuge on the East Anglian coast.
And, while all this happened, Æthelred was still in Lundene.
He complained that the ale on his ships was sour. He told Bishop Erkenwald that his men could not fight if their bellies were churning and their bowels spewing, and so he insisted that the barrels were emptied and refilled with freshly brewed ale. That took two days, and on the next he insisted on giving judgment in court, a job that properly belonged to Erkenwald, but which Æthelred, as Ealdorman of Mercia, had every right to do. He might not have wished to see me, and Gisela might have been turned away from the palace when she had tried to visit Æthelflaed, but no free citizen could be barred from witnessing judgments and so we joined the crowd in the big pillared hall.
Æthelred sprawled in a chair that could well have been a throne. It had a high back, ornately carved arms and was cushioned with fur. I do not know if he saw us, and if he did he took no notice of us, but Æthelflaed, who was sitting in a lower chair beside him, certainly saw us. She stared at us with an apparent lack of recognition, then turned her face away as if she was bored. The cases occupying Æthelred were trivial, but he insisted on listening to every oath-taker. The first complaint was about a miller who was accused of using false weights, and Æthelred questioned the oath-takers relentlessly. His friend, Aldhelm, sat just behind him and kept whispering advice into Æthelred’s ear. Aldhelm’s once handsome face was scarred from the beating I had given him, his nose crooked and one cheekbone flattened. It seemed to me, who had often judged such matters, that the miller was plainly guilty, but it took Æthelred and Aldhelm a long time to reach the same conclusion. The man was sentenced to the loss of one ear and a brand-mark on one cheek, then a young priest read aloud an indictment against a prostitute accused of stealing from the poor box in the church of Saint Alban. It was while the priest was still speaking that Æthelflaed suddenly griped. She jerked forward with one hand clutching at her belly. I thought she was going to vomit, but nothing came from her open mouth except a low moan of pain. She stayed bent forward, mouth open and with the one hand clasped to her stomach that still showed no sign of any pregnancy.
The hall had gone silent. Æthelred stared at his young wife, apparently helpless in the face of her distress, then two women came from an open archway and, after going on one knee to Æthelred and evidently receiving his permission, helped Æthelflaed away. My cousin, his face pale, gestured at the priest. ‘Start again at the beginning of the indictment, father,’ Æthelred said, ‘my attention wandered.’
‘I had almost finished, lord,’ the priest said helpfully, ‘and have oath-takers who can describe the crime.’
‘No, no, no!’ Æthelred held up a hand. ‘I wish to hear the indictment. We must be seen to be thorough in our judgment.’
So the priest began again. Folk shuffled their feet in boredom as he droned on, and it was then that Gisela touched my elbow.
A woman had just spoken to Gisela who, twitching my tunic, turned and followed the woman through the door at the back of the hall. I went too, hoping that Æthelred was too involved in his pretence of being the perfect judge to see our departure.
We followed the woman down a corridor that had once been the cloistered side of a courtyard, but at some time the pillars of the open arcade had been filled with screens of wattle and mud. At the corridor’s end a crude wooden door had been hung in a stone frame. Carved vines writhed up the masonry. On the far side was a room with a floor of small tiles that showed some Roman god casting a thunderbolt and beyond that was a sunlit garden where three pear trees cast shade on a patch of grass bright with daisies and buttercups. Æthelflaed waited for us beneath the trees.
She showed no sign of the distress that had sent her crouching and dry-retching from the hall. Instead she was standing tall, her back straight and with a solemn expression, though that solemnity brightened into a smile when she saw Gisela. They hugged, and I saw Æthelflaed’s eyes close as if she was fighting back tears.
‘You’re not ill, lady?’ I asked.
‘Just pregnant,’ she said, her eyes still shut, ‘not ill.’
‘You looked ill just now,’ I said.
‘I wanted to talk with you,’ she said, pulling away from Gisela, ‘and pretending to be ill was the only way to have privacy. He can’t stand it when I’m sick. He leaves me alone when I vomit.’
‘Are you often sick?’ Gisela asked.
‘Every morning,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘sick like a hound, but isn’t everyone?’
‘Not this time,’ Gisela said, and touched her amulet. She wore a small image of Frigg, wife of Odin and Queen of Asgard where the gods live. Frigg is the goddess of pregnancy and childbirth, and the amulet was supposed to give Gisela a safe delivery of the child she carried. The little image had worked well with our first two children and I prayed daily that it would work again with the third.
‘I vomit every morning,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘then feel fine for the rest of the day.’ She touched her belly, then stroked Gisela’s stomach that was now distended with her child. ‘You must tell me about childbirth,’ Æthelflaed said anxiously. ‘It’s painful, isn’t it?’
‘You forget the pain,’ Gisela said, ‘because it’s swamped by joy.’
‘I hate pain.’
‘There are herbs,’ Gisela said, trying to sound convincing, ‘and there is so much joy when the child comes.’
They talked of childbirth and I leaned on the brick wall and stared at the patch of blue sky beyond the pear tree leaves. The woman who had brought us had gone away and we were alone. Somewhere beyond the brick wall a man was shouting at recruits to keep their shields up and I could hear the bang of staves on wood as they practised. I thought of the new city, the Lundene outside the walls where the Saxons had made their town. They wanted me to make a new palisade there, and defend it with my garrison, but I was refusing because Alfred had ordered me to refuse and because, with the new town enclosed by a wall, there would be too many ramparts to protect. I wanted those Saxons to move into the old city. A few had come, wanting the protection of the old Roman wall and my garrison, but most stubbornly stayed in the new town. ‘What are you thinking?’ Æthelflaed suddenly interrupted my thoughts.
‘He’s thanking Thor that he’s a man,’ Gisela said, ‘and that he doesn’t have to give birth.’
‘True,’ I said, ‘and I was thinking that if people prefer to die in the new town